Fans and media take pictures of the lifesize Lego McLaren P1 at the Canadian International AutoShow, in Toronto, on Feb. 13.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
It’s probably the slowest vehicle at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto this week, but it doesn’t look it. The Lego McLaren copies the same curves and swoops as the million-dollar McLaren P1 parked beside it, and yes, it actually drives. Formula One driver Lando Norris piloted it on a lap around Silverstone last September.
This is the first time the lifesize Lego car has been shown in North America, but it no longer moves on its own. A large electric motor and its batteries have been removed, mostly for safety in transport. There are still almost 800 little Lego motors under the plastic skin, however, that helped the car hit speeds on the 5.9-kilometre circuit of around 50 kilometres an hour.
There’s a welded steel chassis and real McLaren wheels, brakes and tires, and a real P1 steering wheel, as well as a McLaren badge on the hood, but everything else is Lego plastic and rubber. More than 342,000 pieces, in fact, taken from existing Lego Technic bricks and elements. There’s about 350 kilograms of Lego on the car, plus an extra 870 kilograms of steel and actual McLaren, which all weighs in at just 250 kilograms lighter than the gas-powered real thing.
The skin is made from tens of thousands of yellow “beams,” held together with plastic pins and rubber connectors for flexibility, so it can flex into the curves of the real thing while not falling apart. When Norris drove it, nothing fell off, though he criticized the flimsy stalks of the wobbling side mirrors.
“When you have such a great partner as McLaren, it’s just so natural to go create something that pushes the limits and shows what’s actually possible using all these little Lego Technic elements,” says Lubor Zelinka, the head designer of the 23-person Lego team responsible for the P1, based in Kladno, Czechia.
“We actually learned a lot about how to build solid structures – there’s lots of engineering involved. One of the biggest challenges was how to keep weight down to a minimum, so we would quite literally ask, does this brick have to be here? Every (remaining) brick has a purpose. And there’s a lot you learn about geometry. The P1 is shaped very organically, so we had to figure out how to achieve that.”
One of the fundamentals for any Lego model is that it must be strong enough for somebody to actually play with it, so every brick should be anchored in at least two places. It’s one thing for a model to snap apart when it falls off a display shelf in your home, but quite another when it’s being driven around Silverstone.
It took Zelinka’s team about seven months to design and create the full-sized model, of which about a quarter of the time – 2,210 hours – was spent actually putting together the different bricks and elements. The rest of the time was spent on development, using software programs to determine what would work best.
Lego’s regular models are also pre-designed on computers, though most of their professional creators prefer to just snap bricks together using trial and error to figure out the best and strongest construction techniques. There’s now a one-eighth scale model of the P1 that uses almost 3,900 pieces that sells for $449.99.
This is the fourth lifesize Lego car model that’s capable of moving under its own power, but the first to be able to steer around tight corners.
“The way that Lubor and his team approached the problem of building the car was exactly how we would do it,” says Jonathan Beaumont, a senior vehicle engineering manager for McLaren Automotive Ltd., based in the U.K. who was visiting the Toronto show with the exhibit.
“For us as a brand, this is an opportunity to hopefully inspire the next generation of designers and engineers. Really, that’s the main goal for us. I don’t think there’s anybody at this auto show that hasn’t at some stage, through their lifetime, been playing with Lego bricks and building things.”
You can see a video of Lando Norris driving the Lego McLaren P1 at Silverstone below. If you miss the Lego P1 at the auto show, it will be on display into April at Sherway Gardens shopping centre in Etobicoke before returning to Europe. And yes, there’s a Lego store at the mall.